Certain plants contain mixtures of tocol compounds, such as tocopherol (alpha, beta, gamma and/or delta tocopherols) and/or tocotrienol (alpha, beta, gamma and/or delta tocotrienols) compounds. Previous methods have been used to obtain alpha-tocotrienol containing compositions from natural plant sources, such as palm oils and refined palm oils. Some processes for producing alpha-tocotrienol from plant sources produce alpha-tocotrienol by alkylating beta-, gamma-, and delta-tocotrienols; however, those processes result in a lower amount of alpha-tocotrienol than might otherwise be obtained. In particular, it has been difficult to obtain desirable amounts of alpha-tocotrienol from plant sources containing more than about 5% phytosterol content.
What is needed are improved methods for enriching alpha-tocotrienol from natural plant sources. Furthermore, what is needed are methods for enriching alpha-tocotrienol from natural plant sources, wherein higher amounts of alpha-tocotrienol may be obtained by converting the beta-, gamma-, and delta-tocotrienols to alpha-tocotrienol. The methods provided herein are capable of solving this and other problems.